


This I'll Defend

by 3byeol



Series: This I'll Defend [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Femslash, I'm Sorry Tolkien, Nerdiness, Original Character Death(s), Sorry Not Sorry, early Third Age
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-07 18:51:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5467295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3byeol/pseuds/3byeol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Old Forest Road is not as safe as it once was and Dís becomes stranded in the Greenwood. There are many dangers to be found there, but they are not the dangers she expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This I'll Defend

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Ellen, who inspired me to take my first baby step into the world of Tolkien femslash (although she doesn't know it!), and to Kacy for reassuring me several months ago that this pairing was not completely bonkers.

 

The palanquin had been a comfort. She had thought of it as a vault, sealing her safely away from this unpredictable and overwhelming world outside the delvings of her people.

 

She had heard stories of the violent forces here: rains to drown you, snows to bury you, sun to light you aflame. She had counted herself lucky to live within the protection of a mountain. There had never been any desire in Dís to see how dangerous the outer elements were, even as a younger and more adventurous dam - her tutors had told her enough to satisfy any curiosity she might have had in that respect.

 

The trees that loomed over the Old Forest Road were frighteningly tall and close, reminding her of the tomb-pillars in the Bronze Deep; they were not at all like the trim, soft ones the size of her thumbnail which she had once glimpsed from the gates above Silvercrest. Vines looped through their branches and sloped down to the dirt, choking the road with rot. The palanquin sat in the shade, half-broken. It still looked exquisite, but one end had begun to settle into the forest floor and was hidden by mud and rotten leaves.

 

Dís had imagined this world much differently when it was still separated from her by the palanquin's finely-carved walls. She had expected the air to be still and the light to be bright and harsh. The noises around her, now that she stood here in the open air, sounded strange and echoed oddly.

 

She was small, she realized. Small and vulnerable and stupid.

 

Ásvór’s axe was still resting against one lacquered arm of the palanquin; Dís ran her fingers down one of the langets before taking the handle in her hand. The axe was a true treasure, well-forged and not heavy to lift. She would not be leaving it here as Ásvór had. Chances were that it would make little difference to her survival, but she was born of Durin’s line: even if her maker had formed these last days intending them to be her last, she would not meet her death empty-handed.

 

There was a chance Ásvór lived yet, and if that were so Dís meant to find her. She had still been awake when the shouts rang out last night; she remembered the direction from which they had come. If she turned out to be too late to do anything more for Ásvór than to give her an acceptable burial, Dís could at least take comfort in knowing that neither of them would have to go alone to Mahal's Halls. She knew nothing of survival in this outside world, she had already left the safety of the palanquin, and her escort had been stripped away.

 

The very thought of entering the forest proper was a terrifying one, but it would only be fitting. To leave the roadside - and what little promise it offered of help - was merely one small step further on a path she had already committed to.

 

With the axe in her hand, and her back turned on the distant mountain peak that she had called home, Dís went into the trees.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Dwarves were made to see in the dark, and Dís was used to rooms lit only with crystal and candle - but she was also used to walking on rugs, polished stone, or walkways fitted with cobbles. She was _not_ accustomed to wading through brush that caught at her legs, and her going was wretchedly slow even though she was helped along by Ásvór's axe when the undergrowth grew too thick to pass through.

 

In another time she might have been struck dumb at the sheer variety of plants there were to be found here: some reached her feet and knees, not unlike the bunches of Silver Thyme and budded branches that had decorated her apartments on feast days; some reached to her shoulders, her throat, or even over her head. Now they were only nuisances.

 

The forest grew darker with the passage of the hours. Mournful bird calls and animal howls began shooting through the trees. Dís was not bothered by the lack of light, but she had never before had to navigate under the open sky and more than once she was forced to duck when bat wings beat past her face. The axe was no heavier than it had been when she first picked it up, but her muscles were aching from hours of holding tense.

 

Three days earlier Nithin - one of her escort - had found a stream while exploring the immediate surroundings of their resting site near the road. It was slow and somewhat meandering, curving quite close to the road. Luckily, it had not taken Dís much effort to find; it was one of the friendlier features of her surroundings, with much thinner forest cover along its borders. Someone had even placed chunks of flint along the water's edge, probably intending to slow the water eating away at the bank.

 

Dís followed that stream for lack of anything else to go by, which was, perhaps, an unexpected reason for making a choice that would have such an effect on the course of her life. In fact, years later Dís would not even be able to remember what she had been doing when Tauriel revealed herself there by the riverbank. Perhaps she had paused to take a drink, as she had no food or water of her own. Perhaps she had stopped to look more closely at the stones to be found near the water, in case one would prove useful - or perhaps she had meant to do something else entirely? In any case, for all that Dís knew, at one moment she was alone in the forest and when her eyes closed and opened again the warrior elf was standing before her.

 

Dís had always known that elves lived in these woods. She had heard stories about them as a girl. She had known that they were much taller than dwarves, even taller than Men; they were slender and had wicked tongues and lusted fiercely for treasures even as they denied doing so. Her storytellers had conjured up images that made her young belly twist in unease, and - perhaps fittingly - stoked a fascination in her which their fairy stories could not slake.

 

None of those tales had prepared her to meet one.

The elf _was_ tall. More than that, the elf was frightening. She was a part of the forest, dressed in jagged raiments that seemed to have been birthed from the very trees. Her hands were eerily chalk-pale and when she drew back her hood her eyes and hair gleamed like polished copper. Her countenance was neither as cold nor as peaceful as any of the stories had described; there was a banked fire there, a waiting fury.

 

She was beautiful in the way that Dís would find a sheer cliff beautiful: imposing and alluring, even though drawing close made you feel dizzy and sick with a primal fear.

 

" _Yrc_ ," the elf hissed.

 

Dís did not need to think about what that meant. Misshapen goblins were lurching out of the treeline on the opposite bank, the apparent leader lifting a poorly-crafted blade with a cheer. Dís was born of dwarf lords and ladies, she descended from the line of Durin himself; yet it was neither her nobility nor courage that kept her from screaming at the sight. To put it simply, it was all too sudden. Everything moved too quickly for her to make so much as a sound.

 

The elf curled one lip back in a snarl as she looked down at Dís, drawing a recurve bow--already strung!--from her back. She notched an arrow and launched it just over Dís's head, shooting it off so quickly that Dís had no chance to turn around in time to watch it land. The elf's second arrow found its mark in the throat of the closest goblin; she followed that arrow with a third in nearly the same breath. Five more arrows followed in quick succession. Dis had never seen such smooth precision in all of her life, not even at the practiced displays the Army Under the Mountain had prepared for her family in years past. It was disturbing and captivating in equal measure.

 

As the goblins surged closer, Dís's fear broke through the elf's spell. This was what she had been afraid of: fighting for her life.

 

Dís had never fought before. Unlike the lower born, dwarrowdams of her station did not need to. Ásvór’s axe was easy and hot in her hand; she could throw it. But what if she missed? She had no other weapons, and she flinched at the thought of being left defenseless in front of an elf and goblins alike.

 

She could _die_ here -

 

No. She had taken too long to think. As Dís stood rooted to the ground, the elf leapt over the river with an absurd and self-assured grace which Dís found discomfiting. Dís lingered, unsure whether to follow or to flee.

 

In the end, the elf took the decision out of her hands. In a short span of nauseating moments she felled the rest of the goblins before they could even reach the water. Most were dead, but some had simply gone to the ground with pain: for those Dís watched the elf bend over a few of the goblins, thumping her final arrows into their bodies at close range. Dís listened to their grunts of pain with a sort of distant fascination. She had never before heard the sounds of killing. There were some groans and wet sounds, not all of them attributable to the river lapping down its course.

 

The elf was scavenging through the bodies for her arrows as she went along, and for the last goblin she did not use her bow but pulled a long knife from her belt and wielded that instead. Dís thought she should turn away, but found she did not want to. There was a final scream so loud that the forest went silent for some moments immediately afterwards; it startled a flock of birds into flight from a nearby tree.

 

The elf's knife was still unsheathed and dripped black into the river water as she leapt back over towards Dís on the bank. Her bow was cradled in her other hand and her retrieved arrows were pinched, tips-skyward, between her fingers. She spared no glance for Dís; she merely stalked a few paces into the treeline and sat on the edge of a patch of ferns and tall grass.

 

Sweat trickled down Dís's back.

 

The goblins - for that is what they were, and she was sure she was not mistaken - were dead. The elf was sorting out her arrows on the ground, seeming to pay Dís no attention, but she could not take that for granted. Was she still in danger? Who was to say there weren't more of them? If the goblins all traveled in numbers like the pack this elf had just slain, Dís was sure she would not be able to encounter another one and live.

 

And that was not even to mention the threat posed by the elf. That she could kill this number of goblins on her own was telling of how strong she must be. That alone made her dangerous to Dís, even if she had otherwise made no threat - elves spared no love for dwarves. Some said they hunted dwarves as they hunted animals.

 

Yet, everything Dís had ever been told about elves and goblins was clear on one thing: goblins were invariably wicked and foul, and while the elves were treacherous they had once called upon the dwarves as allies. Dís had learned enough history and diplomacy to know that those claims were true at their heart. She was also keenly aware that, without her escort or any other kind of friend, she would not survive for long.

 

Dis folded her hands, so that they would not shake, and lowered herself onto the ground much as the elf had. "Excuse me," she said, keeping her voice even, "but I must thank you for saving my life. I never expected goblins to be in this beautiful forest, let alone that I might meet them."

 

The elf had been running her arrows methodically through the grass, polishing their tips on the leaves until they were passably clean, but now her hands stilled. She turned her face just enough to stare at Dís from the corners of her eyes.

 

"I don't suppose you could tell me if there are many more goblins in this forest? ...Goblins," Dís repeated. She had thought elves spoke the tongues of Man as well as her own people did, but the elf was only staring at her without showing any recognition. With no small amount of wariness, Dís tried switching to elvish. "Yrch."

 

"Yrch?" The elf tilted her head even further, until she looked not unlike an owl. She had an air of suspicion, but none of the earlier threat she had shown to the goblins. "Yrc," the elf said, dragging the word out. She pointed towards the river where their bodies could still be made out in the darkness across the water. " _Yrc_." Then she pressed her hand to her own chest, splaying it over her heart. "Lindi. Lin - " _Tap_. " - di."

 

Dís cast her mind back to her tutoring. She and her brother had been taught elvish in their lessons, of course; it was traditional even if the Lonely Mountain had little use for it now - but she could not think of what _lindi_ must mean. Something to do with air? With song? Neither of those seemed to make any sense at all. "I am afraid I do not understand," Dís told the elf. "Please forgive my poor elvish." She tipped her head forward, trying to convey a sense of apology.

 

"Your elvish is fine," said the elf, startling Dís. Her voice had a strange quality to it, slow and thick. "Tell me who you are."

 

Dís squeezed her fingers tightly together, thinking fast. Her position was a difficult one. She did not truly know how much danger she was in, or how cautious she should be - let alone in what way. She was true to her upbringing: her father was a ruler, her mother a diplomat, and Dís did not like situations like these where she knew her own words had weight but could not be sure of what their consequences would be. "I am called Dís," she said finally. It was not much, but it was the safest answer she had.

 

" _Dís_." Her name was long in the elf's mouth. "A fine name. You may call me... _Taur-iel_." There was a flash of amusement on her face before she finally abandoned her weapons, leaving them untended around her on the forest floor. She turned to face Dís fully, eyes flitting to the axe held stiffly across her lap. "Is that for flesh or for wood?"

 

"It is for goblins. And perhaps other uses, if I am unfortunate."

 

"There are no more goblins for miles, fortunately."

 

"Do you hunt them?"

 

"And other things that do not belong in these woods besides." The elf - Tauriel - grasped in the leaves with her hands, returning the arrows to her quiver by feel. "I frighten you."

 

"I suppose you do," Dís admitted. "I do not know these woods very well and I have never met an elf before."

 

" _Lindi_ ," Tauriel said firmly. She looked pointedly at Ásvór’s axe. "You  _nogothog_ have little to fear from us if you mind the trees. But you are right to fear our woods. They are not safe to travel through."

 

"On account of goblins?"

 

"And spiders. And more."

 

Dís's throat tightened. She would love to place all of the blame for her predicament on Skafin. He insisted the Old Forest Road was still safe passage, no matter what anyone else said, and she had given in rather than risk another argument. How could she have let this one go? Why had she not _insisted_?

 

It was not only a matter of her own safety, but that of her escort. They were intended to be ceremonial, more of a display than a functional guard. They were a symbol of her status and her means of travel. A living equivalent to the fine palanquin. A lady of Durin's line was never meant to be in danger and never meant to need them as a safeguard for her life.

 

It was damned foolish, all of it. Nithin and Ásvór, Virfi and Glói... they had families, ambitions, personalities. They were not loose wheels on a caravan wagon. They were not property that could be replaced. She was responsible for their lives just as they were for hers, and they had done an admirable job of rising to the occasion on this journey. Now it was her turn to do for them whatever was within her power.

 

With unsteady hands, Dís began to undo the clasps of her high-necked cape. "I do not know what your people think of honor, Tauriel," she began, "but mine think of it very highly. I have no right to ask this of you, but I need your help."

 

Hidden beneath the neckline of her gown was her most valuable possession. It was likely the most valuable pendant to be found in all of the Lonely Mountain and the Iron Hills besides, if one did not count the ones worn by her brother and parents. Her hands were no more steady as she took careful hold of the fine chain and freed it so that Tauriel could see. It was a gorgeous thing, and not one she was showing lightly. Tauriel was now the first person to lay eyes on the necklace outside of Dís's own family and the smith who had crafted it.

 

As she held the pendant up, she tried to read Tauriel's reaction. The elf was staring with her lips parted, and her wide eyes seemed to catch the gleam of the mithril - now they truly did look like copper, sparkling too brightly to be accounted for at this time of night. They must have been right, then - the stories that told of elves and their treasures must not have been exaggerated. Otherwise, Daskjald had skills of smithing that were just as remarkable to the elves as they were to their own people. Either way, it was a reason for Dís to hope.

 

"As I have told you," Dís went on, "I do not know these woods. I fear I cannot make my way through them the way that you can. If you agree to help me with this - if you give me your word - " Dís paused to take a careful breath. "I will promise this to you as the most valuable gift I have to give. You may take it to any dwarf house and my people will greet you with as much warmth as one of their own. They will provide you with anything you may have need of. You would have only to ask."

 

Despite the assurance in her words, Dís was not sure what to expect from Tauriel - or indeed any elf - on her offer. She watched with some trepidation as, after several long moments of no response, Tauriel finally levered onto her feet and stepped close to Dís. Her movements were unnerving and smooth, and Dís had to tip her head back in order to see her face. The elf seemed to her to be as tall as the trees overhead, her hair crowned with dark night leaves. Her proximity made Dís's skin prickle.

 

"Beauty upon beauty," Tauriel said softly. "For what do you ask my help? That you offer this to me." She leaned down and wrapped one of her hands around the necklace. Her long fingers were unable to avoid touching Dís's hand where it supported the chain.

 

Dís kept her head straight and proud as she answered. "You told me that you hunt those who do not belong in this forest." Dwarves most certainly did not belong. "I must find two of my companions, whether or not they still live."

 

"I see." Tauriel's eyes flickered down as she considered the proposal, but it did nothing to lessen the effect she had.

 

While she thought, Dís took the chance to examine the elf's face. Her skin was unnaturally smooth and hairless, and she had pointed features. Her hair fell loose and straight about her ears and shoulders without a tangle, even though it was not braided. All so... unfamiliar. Another dwarf, or a Man, would have jumped at the chance to own such a finely crafted treasure as Dís had even if they did not recognize her for what - for who - she was.

 

Elves must enjoy beauty as much as anyone else did, Dís thought, but to live in a place like this... Tauriel would not survive here if she did not put practicality before all else. Dís was uncomfortably aware that it would not be an advantage in any way for Tauriel to help her. She was casting herself upon the elf's generosity, hoping that the impression she made was a good one; which made Dís wonder, with some trepidation, what the elf thought of her. Did she find Dís to be unlovely? Untrustworthy? Someone to be safely ignored and forgotten?

 

Dís hoped not. She did not think she would be so lucky to meet anyone else in this forest who did not wish her harm and she was well aware of how few options she now had.

 

Finally, Tauriel released the chain and straightened to her full height. Whatever hold Dís's necklace might have held over her was gone. She turned away, and Dís opened her mouth in order to call out - or perhaps to beg the elf not to leave her alone -

 

But Tauriel simply returned to her previous spot in the brush, scattering a few leaves as she bent down to retrieve her knife. "I will see it done," she said, and she did not spare a glance for either Dís or for the offered necklace as she slid the knife back into its sheath.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Silly as it sounds, this 'style' is way outside of my comfort zone (I'm best at humor). I'm still a bit nervous, but I hope you enjoyed it nevertheless.
> 
> The final parts to follow as I'm just giving them a last once-over for formatting. Thanks for reading! 8)


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